The Thunder King (Bell Mountain)

BOOK: The Thunder King (Bell Mountain)
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Published by Storehouse Press
P.O. Box 158, Vallecito, CA 95251

Storehouse Press is the registered trademark of Chalcedon, Inc.

Copyright © 2011 by Lee Duigon

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

Book design by Kirk DouPonce (www.DogEaredDesign.com)

Printed in the United States of America

First Edition

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2011933788

ISBN-13: 978-1-891375-56-9

ISBN-10: 1-891375-56-3

 

Table of Contents

 

1.
Rain

2.
A Dance of Predators

3.
King Ryons’ Charge

4.
Faces in the Fire

5.
News from the East

6.
A View from on High

7.
Some Words of Prophecy

8.
The Lost King

9.
Wanderers

10.
The Forest and the City

11.
Merry Mary

12.
The Survival of the Temple

13.
The Walls of Obann

14.
A Man on Horseback

15.
Obst Gives Thanks

16.
Ryons and Edwydd

17.
Cavall Strikes

18.
Helki and the Heathen Champion

19.
New Recruits

20.
Obst Preaches from the Scrolls

21.
The Death-Dog

22.
Jack and Ellayne Rebel

23.
The Badger and the Bear

24.
Runaways

25.
Captured by the Heathen

26.
Nanny’s Visions

27.
The Last Prophet

28.
The Griffs Return

29.
The Voice of God

30.
The Start of a Very Long Journey

31.
“A New Thing That You Will Not Believe”

32.
How Chillith Became a Mardar

33.
The Bell Tower

34.
A New Marching Song

35.
The End of a Long Friendship

36.
Wytt Arranges an Ambush

37.
Cavall Bolts

38.
The Great Beast

39.
The Last Sunset

40.
The Mission of the Temple

41.
Lord Reesh’s Departure

42.
The Salvation of the Lord

43.
How the City Got a King

44.
How CHillith Learned to See

 

 

CHAPTER 1
Rain

On one of the last peaceful nights they would know for a long time, a boy and a girl, and a man who had been a paid assassin, made camp under the shelter of three stinkfruit trees, and after a meager supper, looked up at the stars. Hidden safely among their gear were long-lost books of Scripture, which they couldn’t read.

Behind them, a few days’ journey to the west, lay the city of Obann, where the Temple stood, and across the river from it, the ruined city where they’d discovered the scrolls. Much closer, and surely gaining on them, came pursuit. The man was resolved that if the pursuers caught them, he would have to kill the children he’d sworn to protect. They mustn’t be taken alive by servants of the Temple. He ought to know: he’d been one for most of his life.

Far to the east of them lay Lintum Forest, and friends who would protect them. In between were Heathen armies, great hosts marching one after another to the city of Obann, which they’d vowed to destroy.

“The world still hasn’t ended,” said the boy, Jack. “I thought it would have all of a sudden. I never thought it’d be months and months.”

“It isn’t going to end. Everyone was wrong about that,” said the girl, Ellayne, who had become something of a heretic on the subject.

Together, in obedience to a calling that had come to them in dreams and that they believed was a commandment from God, Jack and Ellayne left home and climbed Bell Mountain (a story that has been told elsewhere). There they found the bell that King Ozias had erected on the summit in ancient times, hidden in the cloud that always blanketed the peak. According to what they’d been taught, when someone rang that bell, God would hear it and unmake the world. Jack and Ellayne believed God had chosen them to ring the bell. They obeyed—but the only thing that happened was that the bell fell down and broke; and for the first time in the memory of man, a wind came and blew away the cloud from the top of the mountain. But later they were told that everyone in the world had heard the bell and wondered what it was.

Martis, the assassin, had been sent by the Temple to stop the children from ringing the bell. In that mission, he failed. Out of fear of God, which was a new thing for him, he took up a new mission: to guard the children and protect them from the Temple.

There was one more member of their party, a manlike creature about the size of a large rat. He, too, guarded the children. He was an Omah, one of the little hairy men who inhabited the ruins of great cities that were destroyed in the downfall of the Empire, so long ago. They’d named him Wytt, short for Manawyttan, a hero in an ancient romance that Jack thought, privately, was a lot of nonsense: girl stuff.

Wytt stood up, sniffed the air, and chattered.

“He says it’s going to rain tonight,” Jack said. Since they’d rung the bell, he and Ellayne were able to understand the Omah’s not-quite language. But Martis couldn’t.

“I hate getting rained on!” Ellayne grumbled.

“Don’t be ungrateful,” Martis said. “If it rains hard enough, it’ll wipe out whatever trail we’ve left.”

 

 

It rained on Lintum Forest, too. In the old ruined castle that his people were working on every day to turn into a place to live, the boy who was to be King of Obann lay awake on a bed of ferns. He had much to think about.

His name was Ryons, but that was a new name. He’d been born a slave, and if his mother had ever given him a name, no one ever thought to tell him what it was. For most of his life his masters simply called him Gik—which wasn’t a name at all, but a foul and ugly word in their language.

Now he had clean clothes, a horse that he hadn’t learned to ride, and a small army of desperate men from many different Heathen countries. These were the men who called him king—them, and a little girl who made prophetic utterances that no one understood, and a half-crazy old man who spoke all the languages in the world without knowing how he did it, and who’d taught the army to worship God instead of idols and devils. Even if Ryons had grown up in a nice home with parents who told him fanciful stories of olden times, he never would have heard a story half so fabulous as the one he seemed to be living in.

BOOK: The Thunder King (Bell Mountain)
5.18Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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